Risk register · entry
Q-F · FraudFTX / Alameda
A backdoor let customer deposits fund the trading arm until it collapsed.
The fifth quadrant, where the thing was never real. The tell is that the story is too clean.
Why this quadrant
A single flag on Alameda's account let it draw customer deposits without limit. That is a bounded mechanism, and it accounted for an 8 billion dollar hole. What made it systemic rather than contained was the run: once CoinDesk published Alameda's balance sheet, roughly 6 billion left in 72 hours and took lenders and retail holders elsewhere with it.
The record
- $8 billion hole in FTX customer accounts (DOJ/court figure)certain
- $1.7 billion defrauded from FTX equity investorscertain
- $1.3 billion defrauded from Alameda lenderscertain
- ~$65 billion in effective credit line Alameda could draw via the allow_negative flaglikely
- 25-year prison sentence for Sam Bankman-Fried, March 2024certain
- $11 billion ordered in forfeiturecertain
- Bankruptcy filed November 11, 2022 (FTX plus 100+ affiliates, Delaware)certain
- CoinDesk report on Alameda balance sheet published November 2, 2022, triggering the runcertain
- ~$6 billion in customer withdrawals within roughly 72 hours of the CoinDesk reportlikely
- Sequoia Capital wrote down roughly $214 million investmentlikely
- Estate recovered over $15 billion in assets by 2024-2025, including Anthropic and Robinhood stakeslikely
- 98% of creditors approved to recover ~119% of claim value under 2024 court-approved planlikely
- Over one million customer accounts affecteduncertain
Sources
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